On Tour with J&B, Week 8, 2017

Hover over photos to see arrows for more, and click to enlarge to see photo captions!

Made it to Canada, eh? Yes, and what a beautiful, welcoming country. Ever the busy navigator and researcher, Betty spent much time on the internet looking on how to enter Canada from the U.S. “Oh dear, they’re going to take all our cheese and dairy products, eggs, and fruit!” So, I dutifully hardboiled a dozen eggs (apparently OK if they’re cooked), and fretted about all the cheese in the frig! Finally resigned myself to giving it all up (instead of hiding it somewhere).

Guess what? We were asked several times about weapons (none), and cash (definitely less than $10,000), liquor (about a 5 day supply), and nothing about food items!! Geez, I spent all that time researching and fretting for nothing. Note: we had given our firewood away because we heard we couldn’t take it — and sure enough they are very strict about wood — you cannot take it into Canada. Two Customs officers did search the motorhome (less than 5 minutes), but did not look in the basements or the Jeep.

RV Parks:

Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada: Rockwood Park Campground

Edmundston, NB, Canada: Riverside RV Park on the St. John River.
The Canada/Maine border is in the middle of the river!

Saint John: A bustling, industrious port city on the Bay of Fundy. It is the oldest incorporated city in Canada and the downtown area has beautiful churches and a charming atmosphere. The tides here on the Bay of Fundy rise 53.5 feet! The highest tides in the world. There is a spot on the St. John River with Reversing Rapids. As the Bay’s tides begin to rise, they slow the course of the river and finally stop the river’s flow completely. The effect of the reversal is felt upstream as far as 80 miles inland. Once again we were hampered by cold, rainy weather so did most of our sightseeing from the Jeep. Golf was out.

Edmundston: About an hour out of Saint John we saw blue sky for the first time in over a week! We were happy campers once again, and ready to hit the golf course. Our route was on the Trans-Canada Highway — a great road with beautiful green hills, farm land, and trees everywhere. We really enjoyed the drive. (We parked in a funeral home parking lot to make lunch and take a rest.) After checking into our campsite, we loaded up the clubs and headed to the course, at 5:30pm. No problem getting in 9-holes on a beautiful course — and it was 70 degrees — awesome! Made a time to play 18 holes the next day. Didn’t happen — the gray, raining weather found us again.

Quebec City: What a delightful city. Very French and very friendly. Yes, French may be the primary language spoken, but everyone we spoke to also spoke English. We really enjoyed driving and walking around Old Quebec. Lots of old buildings, shops and restaurants in a small space. The City was alive, even on a drizzly day. We hiked 310 steps to the Citadelle, (construction began in 1673,) and from there we had a great view of the massive St. Lawrence Seaway that flows from Lake Ontario to the Atlantic Ocean.

Montreal: Another great Canadian city with old buildings and new, towering condominiums and massive office buildings. We enjoyed walking Rue Saint-Paul, a cobblestone street, no cars, lots of people, shops and restaurants Had a great dinner at Modavie.

Toronto: We had a great round of golf with a couple of friendly Canadians — come to think of it, all the Canadians have been friendly! Growth happening everywhere, construction all around, industry and businesses appear to be flourishing. We had lunch in the Distillery District, a hip commercial and residential district near the harbor (not sure why John picked this area).

Niagara Falls: Downtown area looks a lot like Anaheim in proximity to Knott’s Berry Farm and Disneyland. Not quite what we were expecting, but the Falls were magnificent! FYI, “Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse built the first hydro-electric power plant in 1895 in Niagara Falls and started the electrification of the world.” — Tesla Memorial Society of New York

We hung around for a few days waiting for the sun to come out to take a helicopter tour, compliments of son, Dan. We found an 18-hole executive course to occupy a couple of hours — that was fun. Had some pizza, went on some walks, had a drink in a bar overlooking the Falls . . . and finally, the morning of day four . . . the sun came out.

What a fabulous 12-minute ride it was! We had a private tour — just the pilot, John and I. Great views of this spectacular natural wonder. Thank you, Dan!

A couple of notes about Canada: very friendly, nice people; the cities we visited looked vibrant and prosperous; even the less affluent neighborhoods were neat and well-kept; there seemed to be one to three golf courses at 90% of the exits off the highway; and, finally, apparently we were just too early for good weather! Several locals said it was the “coldest, wettest spring in years.”